Summer mei ling lee biography
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Lee Mei-ling, Summer
Summer Mei-Ling Lee was born and raised in San Fancisco. A multi-disciplinary artist, she creates process-based works and performances, embracing risk-taking and collaboration. Through research and upptäckt, she sets the conditions for art to enter. Lee explores themes of absence and presence, the impermanence of cultural heritage and humanity’s relationship with “the unknowable”, as seen through her paintings depicting the expanse of the ocean horizon. Her diptych works on paper and mounted on wooden structures form a mirror image of the horizon, recalling the idea of “heaven and earth” in Chinese creation myths.
Lee’s work often includes projected visuals, with images shifting between layers of translucent sheets of paper; she utilizes light to create different levels of visualization. In the exhibition with Alisan Fine Arts-New York, her recent cyanotypes have a similar effect. Lee prints family photos onto layers of gauze so that the viewe
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Photo by Shae Rocco, 2012
“A trace that marks the present with its absence in advance.“
– Derrida
The pre-classical Chinese character Li, as in the title of the poem from 300 BC, Li Sao, contains pictographs which illustrate the catching and releasing of a bird to make up the sentiment of the “woes of departing”, or the lament of being human. The character Li depicts the irony of being human in that we are constantly caught and freed, both self and non-self, translated and liberated, here and there — as could only be portrayed by a human interfering with a creature of flygning, as could only be elicited by a work of art.
The work of the artist fryst vatten to set the conditions for art to enter. In recent work, I focus on the conditions of this fragile relationship — the “breath-turn” — between absence and presence, artist and collaborator, and our relationship to the unknowable. Painting, sculpture, installation, video, and performance can each
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Ocean
Ink on paper, stretched on wood. 6.5’ x 3’
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diptych
Chinese Ink and Watercolor on Paper Stretched onto Wood Frame.
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wing
Ink on Paper Mounted on Wood Frame 24” x 48”.
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hummingbird
Acrylic and watercolor on fabric mounted on wood frame.
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Box of Medieval Moonlight
Summer Mei Ling Lee, Box of Medieval Moonlight, unique art objects for sale during Church on the Moon happening, 2019. Please contact gallery for more information.
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An Atlas of the Invisible
“Summer Mei Ling Lee and Laura Boles Faw’s collaborative installation, An Atlas of the Invisible, on view at Minnesota Street Project as part of the exhibition re:home (curated by Amy Kisch of AKArt, Candace Huey of re.riddle and Suzanne Zuber), furthers the show’s exploration of the themes of sanctuary, home/homelessness, and the displacement of artists and creative professionals in the San Francisco Bay Area. Boles Faw’s depart